Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Friday, October 04, 2013

Oxymoron? Wiser GOP Heads Arise

With
Republicans and the nation still held hostage by a Tea Party brat pack,
there is finally a stirring of sanity among party elders. Wiser heads are
starting to push back about life beyond Boehner.

The New York Times reports a GOP Senate lunch
erupting into a “lynch mob” against Ted Cruz, with John Cain/Lindsay Graham’s
third amigo, Kelly Ayotte, angrily waving a printout from a Cruz-friendly group
attacking 25 Republican senators for a procedural vote that it counted as
support of Obamacare.

Republican
governors are joining the chorus. “This is a huge distraction,” complains Tennessee’s
Bill Haslam. “Instead of that being the conversation, we’re talking about the
government shutdown, and the average citizen can’t help but say the Republican
Congress isn’t helping.”

Another wise
elder, former Mississippi governor and head of the National Committee Haley
Barbour, adds: “The story people see now is President Obama sinking like a
rock for months, and the only thing holding him up are the Republicans.”

Meanwhile,
the President himself holds firm. “We don’t expect 100 percent. But...it is not
acceptable for one faction of one party in one chamber to say, ‘Either we get
what we want, or we’ll shut down the government.’ Or even worse: ‘We will not
allow the U.S. Treasury to pay its bills and put the United States in default
for the first time in history.’ So the message I have for the leaders is very
simple. As soon as we get a clean piece of legislation, that reopens the
government.”

He
follows that with an even blunter speech: "Speaker John Boehner won't even
let the bill get a yes-or-no vote, because he doesn't want to anger the extremists
in his party. That's all. That's what this whole thing is about."

Wouldn’t
it be ironic if Republicans finally came to their senses and found the
President too teed-off to settle with them?